In claiming a unique and radical performative space wherein to exercise agency and display new forms of organization, the green tide also has by the same token laid claim to a reconfigured public space conducive to new forms of sociality and the preservation of all lives.
While the dynamic between the theoretical production of knowledge within academic settings and militant feminism is not something new in Argentina and other Latin American countries, the novelty is that it is the younger generation - sometimes even of high school age - that has taken to the streets while demanding an inter-generational conversation around Gender Studies. This new wave of feminists sees abortion, femicides, and austerity measures as different but interrelated forms of violence toward women and bodies marked as feminine.
This is the undertow that made the earth tremble on July The name of the overpowering massive public intervention on July 31 itself points to both an agenda and resources to put that agenda into action, which include but are not limited to the single issue of abortion. Source: Lobo Solto! Both femicides and deaths by abortion are viewed by these activists as violent acts perpetrated against feminized bodies by a state largely responsible for these and other forms of gender violence, either via neglect or by implementing austerity measures whose effects are disproportionately harsher on these bodies.
Labor exploitation, salary reduction, job insecurity, massive layoffs, budget cuts, police violence, the criminalization of sexual dissidence, the uninhibited exploitation of common resources, among others, are all but manifestations of neoliberal regimes that have taken over Latin American countries since the s. In turn, unionized women workers have adopted methods of struggle launched by the green tide.
Conversely, the new wave of feminist activism has become a visible and constant presence in several labor conflicts. Both the mobilizations prompted by the debate around the legalization of abortion and the series of strikes organized have been informed by a profound sense of class consciousness, as activists addressed differentiated possibilities of access to safe abortion and forms of labor that remain invisible and unrecognized. In their interview with Jacobin magazine, Luci Cavallero et al.
